Frantic, that’s the word that springs to mind. Ramshackle, that’s another. Frantic and ramshackle but wonderfully so. Two Man Travelling Medicine Show are a perfect storm of roots music, bluegrass stomps played with a punk swagger, pastoral folk taken on a white-knuckle ride on an out of control cider cart. Country-core? Cow-punk? Who knows?
It’s the same clash of Old World urges and New World sounds that saw me fall for fellow southern country-punks The Cropdusters all those years ago. It makes me think that somewhere amongst the hill forts and chalk downs of this ancient part of the world there is a ley-line, a spiritual hillbilly highway that runs along the south coast under the ocean and on through the Appalachian Mountains and thus explaining the musical connection.
Fiddles flash, guitars get abused, basses grumble and an incessant beat pushes the song ever closer to the edge. It’s the soundtrack to Stonewall Jackson leading a charge on Maiden Castle…now there’s an image.
[…] time I dipped my toe into the crazy waters of The Two Man Travelling Medicine Show it was to experience their clattering cider-punk-country-hoedown Tightropin’ a song which gave me […]
[…] they think and the things they find amusing. Truth be told, they had me before that. They had me at Tightropin’ that most English of romps through the most American of sounds. And that is really the essence of […]